The literary construction of a monstrous portrait : King Richard III by Thomas More and William Shakespeare

Thomas More’s narrative The History of King Richard the Third (ca. 1514) and William Shakespeare’s play King Richard III (ca. 1591) may be considered the epitomes of a tradition that has for ever vilified the last Plantagenet monarch of England. Even in later fictional works, it is hard to come across a more distorted and evil character, whose outward appearance faithfully mirrors his inner moral self. Among several other minor or major contributions to this character’s vilification, Bernard André and Pietro Carmeliano had presented him as a monster, physically abominable; John Rous had registered his abnormal birth: after two years in his mother’s womb, the child was born exhibiting teeth and shoulder-length hair; Polydore Vergil had explicitly accused him of the murder of the Lancastrian Prince of Wales, Henry VI’s son. It is my intention to focus on the way More and Shakespeare exploit and amplify this vituperative historiographic tradition, full of serious accusations, though mostly based on rumour, uncertainties and legendary elements. Within this widely accepted tradition, both authors manage to shape a solid portrait of a monstrous Richard, an exemplum not to be imitated or followed, but whose masterly performance, coinciding with the mastery of the rhetorical devices, has never failed to impress successive generations of readers and theatre-goers